Separation and solitude in nursing homes amid coronavirus...

1of13Linda Purcell can't go visit her mother Eleanor Purcell in The Heights on Huebner nursing home in person but she can visit through the window of her mother's room, on Thursday, April 2, 2020.Photo: Bob Owen /Staff photographer

2of13Linda Purcell says it’s hard to turn away from the window after a visit with her mother at The Heights on Huebner nursing home.Photo: Bob Owen /San Antonio Express-News

4of13Linda Purcell keeps a room in her house with items from her mother.Photo: Bob Owen /San Antonio Express-News

5of13Linda Purcell is one of many family members who now stay outside to visit their loved ones in nursing homes..Photo: Bob Owen /San Antonio Express-News

6of13Linda Purcell can't go visit her mother Eleanor Purcell in The Heights on Huebner nursing home in person but she can visit through the window of her mother's room.Photo: Bob Owen /San Antonio Express-News

7of13Linda Purcell sitting outside the room of her mother for a visit at The Heights on Huebner nursing home.Photo: Bob Owen /San Antonio Express-News

8of13Linda Purcell and her mother in one of their daily visits The Heights on Huebner nursing home.Photo: Bob Owen /San Antonio Express-News

9of13Linda Purcell leaves after one of her nursing home visits with her mother, Eleanor.Photo: Bob Owen /San Antonio Express-News

11of13Laura Riggs tries to stay in touch with her mother Freddye Riggs who is in a nursing home closed to visitors.Photo: Tom Reel /Staff photographer

12of13Laura Riggs stays in touch with her mother, Freddye Riggs, through FaceTime, since she can’t visit her in her nursing home room..Photo: Tom Reel /Staff photographer

13of13Laura Riggs sits in her new SUV which she bought in order to make it easier to transport her mother. Now she can only try to stay in touch with her mother Freddye Riggs by face timing or calling.Photo: Tom Reel /Staff photographer

Linda Purcell placed her left hand on the nursing home window where her mother, Eleanor, sat in a wheelchair on the other side.

“Mom! I missed you,” she said over the cellphone.

“I missed you, too,” Eleanor, 88, said with a smile.

It has been more than three weeks since the daughter and mother, the best of friends, got to give hugs, squeeze hands, stroll the mall, eat lunch together.

In mid-March, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered nursing homes to close their doors to nonessential visitors to shield the elderly from the potentially fatal coronavirus — a mandate now in states and localities across the country. Some nursing homes voluntarily closed earlier out of an abundance of caution.

Nevertheless, the contagion has infected many of them. Just last week, officials announced an outbreak at the Southeast Nursing and Rehabilitation Center that infected 67 of its 84 residents and killed one of them. Eight of the 60 staff have tested positive, and the city is working to test the remaining 52. Staff there also worked at seven other facilities in the city, potentially infecting other nursing homes.

“In case anyone in San Antonio needed a wake-up call about the seriousness of COVID-19 to our community, this is it. COVID-19 is alarmingly contagious and very insidious,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said at a news conference about the nursing home outbreak.

There are 68 nursing home facilities in San Antonio and 74 in surrounding areas, said Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff. Last year, Southeast Nursing had received the lowest rating from federal regulators — one of five stars — and was cited for poor sanitation procedures and infection control. The Fire Department said Friday that it is inspecting 34 facilities that have the lowest federal ratings.

One of the deadliest nursing home outbreaks in the country was in Washington state, where 129 residents of the Life Care Center were infected and 37 died from the coronavirus. Dangerous outbreaks in Tennessee, Ohio, Massachusetts and other states have occurred since.

Across the U.S., about 450 nursing home residents have died from the coronavirus and some 2,300 infections have been reported in long-term care facilities for the elderly.

Experts say the best solution to prevent these outbreaks is to secure COVID-19 tests for nursing home workers because the daily staff temperature check does not identify symptom-free carriers of the virus. But cities and states are struggling to secure enough tests for their first responders and health care workers at hospitals, much less at every nursing home facility.

While necessary, the family separations chip away at the mental well-being of the residents as well as their spouses, children and grandchildren.

“It’s like, I know she’s alive, but I can’t see her much, I can’t touch her, I can’t hold her, I can’t get that lovely hug, you know?” Linda Purcell said. “She’s always so grateful to me, for everything I do. And she tells me that.”

Purcell, 59, quit her job seven years ago to care for her mother. After several dangerous falls, her mom was admitted to the Regent Care Center in 2013. In 2016, she was transferred to the Heights on Huebner. Purcell said it costs nearly $9,000 a month for her mother to stay at the facility.

But that didn’t stop the mother-daughter duo from seeing each other every day. For years, Purcell did her mother’s laundry, brought her organic food and bottled water, took her shopping at the mall and took her to have lunch at the Barn Door Restaurant steakhouse.

She has a room in her home on the North Side dedicated to her mother. Eleanor Purcell’s upright piano is there — she started teaching Linda to play at age 3, and later they performed duets. It has her old-fashioned chaise lounge. Framed photos of her mother throughout her life are scattered throughout the room.

“My mom is my life,” she said. “We do everything together.”

Linda Purcell is immune-compromised from a chronic respiratory illness and a few years ago was bitten three times by a rattlesnake in Helotes. She’s been staying indoors, ordering delivery and venturing out only to visit her mother at the Heights, through her screened-in window that overlooks the courtyard.

“There’s a well-defined border between us that I can’t even — there’s no way in, there’s no way in there,” Linda Purcell said. “It’s a wall of separation, there’s no way around it. You just have the memories of the good times and the faith that there will be more good times.”

More than 25 miles east in Windcrest, Laura Riggs flipped open her iPad at home to see her mother’s face, crinkled into a smile. News had just broken about the Southeast nursing home — one death and 13 cases of infection, a number that would later grow.

“When you reach a certain age, you know you’re not going to live forever. And I don’t want to die that way. But if I have to, I have to. I take it as it comes,” she said in an interview over FaceTime.

At 93, she lives in hospice care at the Elmcroft of Windcrest nursing home. She has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and is always hooked up to oxygen concentrators.

“If I get the disease, since my lungs are clearly damaged, it would be harder on me. Pretty much they said I would not survive it,” Riggs said. ‘But I’m ready to die. I tell my children, don’t be sorry if I die.

“I enjoy life, but I’m not afraid of death.”

Before the quarantines and the pandemic, Freddye and Laura Riggs went to church on Sundays. Then they’d go out to eat — usually Olive Garden, sometimes Texas Roadhouse or Jim’s. And during the week, Laura Riggs stopped by the home to bring her mother decorations for her room or grab takeout and open up bags of Whataburger together for dinner.

That was the last thing they did together: On March 17, they chatted over Whataburger takeout past the 7 p.m. curfew for visitors, Laura Riggs said with a chuckle.

Three days later, when she tried to visit her mother again, she wasn’t allowed inside.

“I appreciate the precautions because I know if it hits them, it’ll hit them hard,” said Laura Riggs, who teaches sixth grade at Ed White Middle School.

“We saw each other real often until then,” Freddye Riggs said. “I know she’s OK, and I like keeping in touch with her.”

Technology has been their saving grace — it’s the window into each other’s lives. Laura Riggs said she was grateful that she’d set her mother up with FaceTime months ago so she could communicate with her two other daughters, who live across the country.

They talk several times a week. Laura Riggs shows her mom the dogs — one of them is Freddye’s — and tells her about her day. They reminisce in old memories, talk about plans that will make new ones.

But the threat is always there.

“If she gets it, she will die. There’s no doubt about it,” Laura Riggs said. “Like she says — she’s ready. But we’re not ready.”

Over on the Northwest Side, Linda Purcell tells her mother that she loves her before she leaves her post outside the nursing home.

“We have a good time together, don’t we?” she observed to her mother.

“We did,” said Eleanor Purcell.

“No, we do,” Linda Purcell emphasized, her smile faltering for a moment. “We do still have a good time. Always will.”

She crossed her arms over her chest like a hug and blew kisses to the window as she hung up the phone. Eleanor Purcell watched her daughter as she left the window, headed back to the house with a room dedicated to her.

“It’s a very solemn moment walking away from the window,” Linda Purcell said. “Because you just don’t know what will happen when you leave.”

Silvia Foster-Frau is the immigration reporter for the San Antonio Express-News and is the paper’s lead reporter on the Sutherland Springs mass shooting, which was the 5th deadliest in the country at the time of the attack in November 2017.

She grew up in Galesburg, Illinois, and took a gap year to live in Mexico after high school before attending Grinnell College. She graduated with a bachelor’s in English in 2015. Silvia interned at Minnesota Public Radio, wrote in English and Spanish for the bilingual Chicago newspaper Extra News, and in 2015 won the two-year Hearst Journalism Fellowship. She reported in Connecticut for a year and then moved to San Antonio in 2016.

In 2018 she won the Express-News’ Reporter of the Year award and Texas AP’s Michael Brick Storytelling Award. In 2019 she won Texas AP Star Reporter of the Year in the biggest newspaper category.

Silvia is half Puerto Rican and half Iowan. She loves breakfast tacos, frequently says “y’all” and keeps a stash of cascarones at her desk, so it’s safe to say she’s fully embraced the San Antonio way.